Tag Archives: Radio City Christmas Spectacular

Radio City Christmas Spectacular An Age-Old Holiday Treat

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is gearing up to begin their seasonal show, to play from November 7th to December 31st. With performances taking place at Radio City Music Hall on 6th Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, this is sure to be a dynamic and magical experience. Led by the world renowned Rockettes, the show features dancing and immersive entertainment that is fun for the whole family. Every year, the Rockettes train harder and the show design is more innovative, aiming to up the ante from the many years before.

(Insanely) Busy Schedule for Performers

This year, the Rockettes will be kept very busy. On Saturdays in December, they will play an extraordinary six shows per day.
Furthermore, during the five day Christmas period between December 19th and 23rd, they will do 26 shows. Fortunately, the dancers rotate so that they do not all do all the shows. In New York, there are two casts each of about 36 women. The dancers divide their performances by morning/afternoon and evening casts, so that each cast can get a break each day. In past years, it was reported that each cast would perform about 108 shows over the course of the season. They are fortunate the show is only seasonal, because it is actually so tiring that many are so fatigued that they need the 10 months off!

What Do The Rockettes Do for the Rest of the Year?

Rockettes are professional athletes who train rigorously not only in dance, but in other forms of fitness to keep them athletic year round. Furthermore, many of them are students, or pursuing careers in other areas of the entertainment field. It is common for them to be models or actors, and many of them work year round in musical theatre. Still, for many Rockettes, this is their only time dancing on stage in a given year. The Rockettes tend to be hired year after year, which allows the team to remain strong while the dancers retain a sense of seasonal stability. This is only one of the many reasons it is such a competitive gig, as year after year countless women compete for the opportunity to dance onstage in the timeless role of a Rockette. in 2014 Radio City was set to launch the Heart and Lights show that was planned to run from the spring to early summer of 2014. The show would have included many of the Rockettes, given that the style of show was similar to The Radio City Christmas Spectacular that runs win the winter in the prelude to the Christmas holiday. The 2014 Heart and Lights show was cancelled prior to opening, but 2015 will see a new version of this show, with a new name, get launched for the Spring 2015 season at Radio City.

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, featuring the Rockettes, is a holiday favorite that is particularly popular with families. While nearby Broadway is often prohibitively expensive for large groups, Radio City frequently offers discount codes, promotions, and cheaper mezzanine seating that makes it possible to get tickets for as low as the $30-$50 range.

The catch is that the Ticketmaster fees associated with these tickets keep getting higher and higher. Even if you get, for instance, a $39 base price ticket for the Radio City show, you will still be stuck paying an additional Ticketmaster “service fee” of $14-$18 per ticket if you order your tickets by phone or online.

Fortunately there is a way to avoid these hefty Ticketmaster fees, and that is to buy your Radio City Christmas show tickets in person at the ticket box office.

Buying tickets in person can be an inconvenience for some and an impossibility for many others who live outside of New York City — which is precisely what Ticketmaster is counting on. However, if you are in the New York area, there are three different locations where you can purchase Radio City Christmas Show tickets in person, so you can choose the location that is most convenient for you.

Ticket Location 1 – The Radio City Music Hall Box Office
The first location is, of course, is the Radio City Music Hall box office, located at 1260 6th Avenue (between 50th and 51st streets). Enter at the corner of 6th Ave and 50th Street to get to the box office in the main lobby. This is a good location to try if you work in midtown Manhattan, or happen to be dropping by the midtown area for something else (such as seeing a Broadway show).

Ticket Location 2 – MSG Madison Square Garden Box Office
The second location where you can buy Radio City tickets is Madison Square Garden’s box office. MSG is located on 7th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd streets. This is the best option for anyone who commutes into the city via Penn Station.

Ticket Location 3 – Beacon Theatre Box Office
The third location is further uptown at the Beacon Theatre, which is at 2124 Broadway, situated between 74th and 75th Streets. People living on the Upper West Side will appreciate this location, and even those who live in Upper Manhattan or the Bronx might find it is fairly easy to stop off at the Beacon on the way home.

Despite the temptation to go the easy route and buy through Ticketmaster, if you are buying multiple tickets to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, you will find that purchasing at one of these three box offices can save you a great deal of money in fees.

As 2012 comes to a close, so do a couple of Broadway shows (Bring It On and A Christmas Story, along with one very popular show that is not on Broadway but at the Radio City Music Hall). Two of these shows, A Christmas Story and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, are holiday-themed productions that were designed to appeal to the Christmas tourist crowd visiting New York City. The Radio City Christmas show has of course been a staple of the NYC holiday seasons for many decades, and year after year it plays for approximately six or seven weeks during the holiday season, delighting audiences with the Rockettes’ precision dancing and the live Nativity scene.

A Christmas Story, on the other hand, was enjoying its first time in New York City. This musical adaptation of a beloved Christmas movie made a good impression on the critics and did excellent ticket sales (especially in December), so there is a good chance that this one could return to Broadway next holiday season and perhaps become a Christmas-time regular.

Bring It On‘s closing is not related to the conclusion of the Christmas holiday, but is simply the result of the show no longer selling enough tickets to make a continued run worthwhile. However, Bring It On, which opened in the summer, was originally scheduled for a very limited run that would have concluded in the autumn. But the competitive cheerleading themed musical received a positive response early in its run, prompting extensions that allowed the show to run much longer than initially planned.

It’s still summertime, but the Christmas holiday shows have already been announced and now is a good time to start thinking about getting tickets for these often popular, limited-run Broadway shows before they start selling out.

In past years, Broadway has seen such holiday entries as White Christmas and Cirque du Soleil’s Wintuk, but the main Christmas-themed Broadway show on this year’s schedule is a new kid in town, A Christmas Story. Based on the 1983 movie of the same name, which has become a TV mainstay during the holiday season, A Christmas Story follows the misadventures of young Ralphie, who desperately wants a BB gun for Christmas. A Christmas Story opens at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on November 19 and closes on December 30.

The stage musical incarnation of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas returns to town this winter season, playing the Theater at Madison Square Garden for a short run, December 13-30. Kids and adults who remember the classic Christmas book and the much-loved cartoon version will enjoy seeing the funny and moving story of a meanie who gains the Christmas spirit live onstage. Memorable songs from the cartoon such as “Welcome Christmas” and “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” are also in this Grinch-y stage show.

The most prominent Christmas show on the New York City theater scene remains the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which has delighted audiences at the famed Radio City Music Hall for over 50 years. The Radio City Christmas show shakes things up a bit each year, usually adding and subtracting segments of the multimedia spectacle, so even if you have already seen it, you will find something new in each year’s showing. There are a wide range of ticket prices available, so if you don’t mind sitting on one of the upper levels, this can be one of the more affordable options for a Christmas show for the family. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular opens on November 9, with a closing date of December 30.

For theater lovers looking for holiday entertainment that is off the beaten path, keep your eyes open for the Off-Off-Broadway listings. It’s a little early yet for schedules, but the Christmas season is always full of special holiday benefit concerts, multiple unique adaptations of The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol, children’s holiday shows, and other Christmas goodies.